Science in the Supply Chain: Collaboration Opportunities for Advancing Sustainable Agriculture in the United States

Abstract

Consumers and corporations are increasingly interested in understanding the sustainability of agricultural supply chains and reducing the environmental impacts of food, fiber, feed, and fuel production. This emerging need to quantify environmental impacts from agricultural production creates an opportunity for collaboration with the scientific community. Without such collaboration, sustainability efforts risk failure by adopting unrealistic goals or misguided approaches. This commentary explores the role of science in Field to Market, a nonprofit organization developing a sustainability program for US commodity crops, and highlights opportunities to address emerging science challenges. We evaluate changes over the past 35 years in key environmental impacts of crop production used to inform land managers as well as companies that are committed to improvements. Achieving improvements will only be possible if three key gaps are addressed regarding available simulation models and data, scale of implementation and uncertainty, and effectiveness of conservation practices. Filling these gaps presents an opportunity for dialogue between scientists, farmers, and private-sector stakeholders to advance scientific knowledge and promote the common objective of sustainable agriculture.A.M. Thomson and G.

Agri-Food Markets towards Sustainable Patterns

“…[182,[256][257][258][259][260][261][262][263], and the opportunity they offer in increasing sustainability, by the reduction of food and package waste [264] and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions [265][266][267][268][269][270][271][272][273] and in providing ecological, health and socio-economic benefits [274][275][276][277][278]. SFSC allow consumers to connect more directly with both farmers and food producers thus enhancing local and rural development [279,280], and are an effective strategy for the preservation and development of urban agriculture, thus addressing the issue of food quality and security [268,281,282]. AFSs are put forward as concrete, tangible examples to achieve agri-food systems transformation.…”

The Nitrogen Balancing Act: Tracking the Environmental Performance of Food Production

“…In the United States, small profit margins and increasing public concern about the environmental impacts of food production have driven substantial efficiency improvements in agricultural production (Thomson et al 2017 ). Despite these efficiency gains, water quality problems related to N loss from agricultural systems continue and may be worsening.…”

Collaboration Perspectives Developing Sustainable Agriculture: The Case of Lithuanian Farmers

“…According to the statements of the authors (Šūmane et al, 2018), "knowledge networking and multi-actor knowledge networks that facilitate knowledge exchanges, joint learning and the generation of new more integrated solutions, are crucial if agriculture is to become sustainable" (p. 232). This statement is supported by other scientists (Thomson et al, 2017), arguing for a dialogue between scientists, farmers and private sector stakeholders in order to gain scientific knowledge and promote the overall objective of sustainable agricultural development.…”

“…Despite the active debate, in the scientific literature the authors agree (Dania et Economic aspect of sustainability includes sustainable creation of financial well-being and economic activity through efficient use of financial resources, reducing waste and saving costs, while ensuring high productivity, consumer satisfaction and service levels. According to the authors (Golebiewska et al, 2020;Wilson, 2017;Thomson et al, 2017;Sulewski et al, 2018, etc. ) the prerequisites for the sustainable development of agriculture in economic terms are created when farms are able to generate income that not only creates a satisfactory life quality for farmers, but also restores the capital used during production and preserves business in the long term prospect.…”